Free Comic Book Day once again was a media favorite, with Diamond, publishers, and local retailers all doing their part to drive coverage from a local and national level. The result: over $3.2 million in free publicity value for the event, the comic industry, and comic shops!

Word of this year’s event also spread through social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and others. Over 108,000 "tweets" alone have made reference to Free Comic Book Day on Twitter, and the event trended nationally on May 3rd from 8:30 AM till 3:00 PM in the #1 (#FCBD) and #2 (#FreeComicBookDay) spots.

Free Comic Book Day's Facebook Page increased by five times the amount as last year, now reaching over 387,000 fans. Many Facebook posts spread virally through the social network and were seen over 100,000 times each. This helped Free Comic Book Day reach 554,000 unique visitors to the web site and 490,000 visitors to the comic shop locator in the months of April and May.

“This years Free Comic Book Day recieved the most coverage in every possible format in all its thirteen years of existence," said Free Comic Book Day spokesperson Jason Blanchard. “Now in its thirteenth year, the event is still considered a good article and story. We saw many more stories that focused on the individual shops themselves and what they were doing to give back to the community with an event like FCBD."

All of the publicity generated helped send an estimated 1 million people to comic book stores all across the world. The continued growth of Free Comic Book Day is directly attributed to the innovative, creative, and newsworthy approaches each retailer brings to their own comics celebration.